Do you consider yourself more left or right wing?

[SanAndreasX]

zorg1000 said:

Chrkeller said:

I do think part of the problem is most don't know how taxes work, so rising taxes gets a huge push back.  

Like increasing Medicare from 3.8 to 5%.  If someone makes 450k, most think that 5% applies to the entire 450k, when it doesn't.  It applies to the 50k above 400k. 

I'm not saying you don't understand how taxes work, but the average American doesn't, which is why so many oppose.  

I had a coworker a long time ago who didn't want want his annual raise because it was going to take him from 98k to 100k and his tax rate was going to increase, and has was going to make less money.  I could not get him to accept the increase tax rate was on the 2k, not applied for the first 98k.  Tbe first 98k was going to be taxed as per usual.

For sure, I’ve had coworkers say similar things in the past, “I don’t want to go up a tax bracket and end up making less!” Or “It’s not worth getting overtime after a certain amount of hours because taxes take it all!”

Overall, our country is financially and politically illiterate but even worse than that, so many people are willfully ignorant. They don’t understand something and put in zero effort to try and learn about it or when given an explanation, they bury their head in the sand and don’t want to hear logic.

And what's even worse is that there are plenty of sources out there that lay the tax structure out in pretty plain terms, at both the state and federal levels. They will even simulate your paychecks for you based on federal, state, and local tax rates, and factors such as withholding and pre- and post-tax deductions.